Judge rules communion hosts can be part of ‘artwork’

The quiet city of Pamplona which usually only attracts attention during its St Fermin fiesta of Running of the Bulls in July, has become the centre of a bitter legal dispute over the use of consecrated hosts in an art exhibition, writes Katy Hounsell-Robert.

In November last year performance artist Abel Azcona used 242 consecrated hosts collected from Masses in Pamplona and Madrid to make up the word “Pederastia” in huge letters on the floor of a public art gallery in Pamplona. He posed naked next to the word for photographers. He claimed the purpose of the “exhibit” was to criticise sexual abuse in the Church. Eighty-nine thousand people signed a petition calling on the mayor to close the exhibition and for the artist to be charged with “explicit desecration” and offending against laws respecting “religious sentiments”.

However, in a recent ruling, Judge Fermin Otamendi described the consecrated hosts as “small white round objects and though the perpetrator had stated on several occasions that he used consecrated hosts, nowhere in the exhibit was it indicated that the hosts with which he had spelled out the word ‘pederasty’ were consecrated.” The judge claimed that “lack of respect should not be confused with not doing what the Catholic Church requires its faithful to do with the consecrated hosts in the act of Communion”.
The Christian Lawyers Association objected to the ruling and has pledged to appeal.